More about Movies and media from Nell Minow, who reviews movies each week for Yahoo! Movies and radio stations across the U.S. and in Canada and writes the Media Mom column about families and popular culture for the Chicago Tribune.

Friday, July 14, 2006

No other filmmaker has made it his business to nurture, kibitz with, heckle and engage his fans on such an intimate, day-to-day basis.

Smith spends several hours online because he enjoys the "constant validation" of interacting with his fans.

Alerted in 1995 to a Web site dedicated to "Clerks," Smith went to an Internet cafe in Red Bank and checked it out. He was so enchanted, he immediately hired its creator, Ming Chen, to do something similar for him.

When Chen suggested putting up a message board, Smith recalls his reaction: "I was, like, 'So at 2 in the morning, if I wake up and I'm, like, I suck, and I'm alone in the world, I can jump on there and have somebody be, like, I like what you do, and sleep better?' I was so dialed in to that notion."